


weeds are flowers too (once you get to know them)

by whoknowsyourfuture



Series: I know you say there's no one for you [1]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Chronic Hanahaki Disease, Don't copy to another site, Let's make this a new tag people, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22873561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoknowsyourfuture/pseuds/whoknowsyourfuture
Summary: So, I have a lot of fics percolating, but I happened upon this post (https://lullabyknell.tumblr.com/post/190899567783/i-know-you-are-not-the-person-who-came-up-with-the) and was inspired, even though this doesn't exactly fit. I love the concept of chronic hanahaki instead of fatal hanahaki so much! And it works so well for Jupeter because of how their cannon relationship is structured.I don't think that either LullabyKnell or ProfessorESP are in the TPP fandom, but this was written because of them, so. Thank you for the inspiration to write in one of my new favorite fandoms!Title is a quote from A.A. Milne.
Relationships: Alessandra Strong/Alessandra Strong's Wife (Background), Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: I know you say there's no one for you [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1644229
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	weeds are flowers too (once you get to know them)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ProfessorESP](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorESP/gifts), [LullabyKnell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LullabyKnell/gifts).



> So, I have a lot of fics percolating, but I happened upon this post (https://lullabyknell.tumblr.com/post/190899567783/i-know-you-are-not-the-person-who-came-up-with-the) and was inspired, even though this doesn't exactly fit. I love the concept of chronic hanahaki instead of fatal hanahaki so much! And it works so well for Jupeter because of how their cannon relationship is structured. 
> 
> I don't think that either LullabyKnell or ProfessorESP are in the TPP fandom, but this was written because of them, so. Thank you for the inspiration to write in one of my new favorite fandoms!
> 
> Title is a quote from A.A. Milne.

So, a lot of things have changed since humans first made it off Earth and to another planet. Obviously, we’ve spread across the galaxy. New inventions, new conventions, new interventions. But one thing that really blossomed in space, no pun intended, was the amount of illnesses humans have to deal with. Of course, we have the really serious, like radiation poisoning, but we also got new sniffles, so to speak. Things that are hardly ever fatal, just another inconvenience to mess up your week, maybe make you skip work a few days if it’s really bad.

One of those is hanahaki.

Supposedly, at one point hanahaki was a fictional disease, popular in Old Earth Japanese fiction and appropriately named after it’s symptoms. When you came down with hanahaki, you coughed up flowers. All types, with varying degrees of- well, coughing up flowers is never going to be fun, but some types of flowers are much worse than others. Roses, for example. The thorns really mess up your throat and esophagus.

Anyways, it was supposed to be fictional. Apparently, when it was fiction it was also fatal. Lot of romances used it as a trope, I guess. Oh yeah, didn’t I mention? Hanahaki is triggered by ‘unrequited love’. So, a lot of last minute love confessions in those stories.

Nowadays though? Nobody dies from hanahaki unless they are the unluckiest person possible. Mostly accidents. Start up a bad coughing fit next to a busy street and you get run over, whether it’s flowers you’re coughing up or air. Nobody knows how hanahaki works, exactly, or how it got started. People just started coughing up flowers all over the place some time after we got off Earth.

Also, the trigger being unrequited love? True. Also, so. Much. Bullshit.

Sure, unrequited love for a potential romantic partner triggers hanahaki. But so does unrequited love between a child and a parent, or vice versa. Or between friends, or an owner and pet. The last one not so much, people are usually pretty good at convincing themselves that their pets love them. Because it doesn’t matter if the person you’re hung up on does or doesn’t love you. It’s all about your _perception_ of whether or not they love you. 

I’ve had hanahaki a lot.

It’s not constant, thankfully. It’s got two nice little month-long seasons per Earth year, in January and July, and if you catch it then, which you most likely will, it mostly clears up in about a week.  Most people just keep living with it. If your flowers don’t have thorns or spiky leaves or whatever, you can just have your coughing fits and go. Normal colds usually affect you more. And honestly, it’s easier to just live with it rather than tell your crush you love them, or your mom that you don’t think she loves you. I honestly don’t know anyone who’s gotten over hanahaki by communicating. It’s a big plot point in a lot of Rita’s streams though. And a lot of people get really into trying to decipher the flower meanings of what they hack up, as if the ideas attached to flowers by Old Earth civilizations, most of which didn’t even see half the flowers in the universe, had  _any_ influence over a purely biological process. 

Sorry, bit of a sore point.

Yeah. Hanahaki is a nuisance, but you live with it. And honestly, you know when you’re going to get it, for the most part.

It’s why I wasn’t all that surprised when, after I kissed Alessandra Strong so that I could pick her pocket, I could barely hold back the petals behind my teeth until she walked out of sight. The punch didn’t help either.

* * *

Daisies. Supposedly, they represented innocence and loyal love. Some also said they meant ‘I will never tell’. I certainly wasn’t innocent in any sense of the word, and I doubted Nureyev was either. Loyal love? I barely knew the guy! I’d shared less than a day and one, perfect kiss with him. No, that didn’t fit either. 

‘I will never tell’, though. That fit, but it’s not like I’d ever told anyone that I’d had hanahaki over _why_ I was choking on plant material. His name… I knew I wasn’t going to spill that to anyone. Didn’t matter if someone came around tomorrow or on my deathbed. I couldn’t. 

I can’t. 

Daisies. Well, there are worse things to cough up.

* * *

I kept on with the case. What else could I do? Julian was counting on me. And when Alessandra coughed up some flowers of her own at Hoosegow, I handed her a handkerchief and looked away politely. Didn’t stop the flash of bright pink as the stack of flowers and straight leaves crawled up her throat. She didn’t offer back the handkerchief, and I didn’t ask for it.

Coughing up flowers made it a bit hard to swallow the pill though.

I stopped whatever I had started with Alessandra when I was in the hospital. Chasing after what I thought was his smell… It just made it clear that I really wasn’t over him. Alessandra didn’t deserve my baggage. And no matter how good a game she talked, she wasn’t over someone too. I may not be great at botany, but there’s only so many flowers that come stacked neatly on their stem. You learn to recognize flowers people cough up when they’re grieving.

We left on better terms than I usually do with people, though. I hope she can find the closure she needs to get over hanahaki. For a while, at least. I don’t think I’ll be so lucky for a good long while.

Or ever.

**Author's Note:**

> This will be part of a series, I have five parts roughly outlined at the moment. Probably going to be one-shots, but we'll see.


End file.
